Full shot? Or half shot? After effects: Groggy to semi-groggy. I bite down on the smooth, egg shell blue Tylenol PM pill, snap it in half. Toss one half back and place the other half on my tongue. I cup hand under the running water, scoop it into my mouth, throw my head back, and chase it down. Do your thing Girl, do your thing.

I flip through blog feeds, Apple News Feed, Google News feed and RSS feeds. A quick peek at work emails. And then on to Kindle. I wade through the last two chapters of A. K. Benjamin’s Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind. Turn the last page of the book, and pause. Why this book, this title, at this time, out of the millions of Kindle options. Benjamin’s words: “Words never surpass the bliss of breathing. Place hand through head: no brain, no mind, no hand” and “I could walk over London Bridge in rush hour, faces thronging around me, and diagnose each one in an instant: Psychosis … Depression … Lewy bodies … Panic … Depression … Sociopathy … OCD … Cynophobia … Panic … Guam’s … Everybody has something.”

Everybody has something…

Just give me 7 hours, 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

And then this somebody will deal with that something, and that everything.

Love your posts 👏 and often I can hear your body screaming “No, no stop!” Ha. 😝My answer to the side effects of life and too many people, is to step away from it all; like today. I have spent about 5hrs in my healing room, breathing out, letting go, visualising, doing yoga, cleansing. I told myself I was not to leave this room until I felt clear and light. And now I do. You are right DK, everyone has something, but I promise you there is always a way to move through it 🙏🏻✨

“Confessions, if they’re worth anything at all, are painful, partial, protracted . . . In many ways I’m still clearing my throat, between stories; the end of one chapter of madness, the beginning of another. Change is long and torturous, seven hundred pages long and called Crime and Punishment, not Crime and Redemption. Unless, that is, it’s sudden, turning on a single word, apparently unprecedented, our hero only seeing something like light—which may just be darkness pausing—on the final page. And that is not withstanding the problem of wanting change when really this is also wanting not to be yourself, if indeed there is anything to change into, if there is anything to be done at all.”

No, change is not long and torturous. And I agree with Benjamin, we don’t have to change into anything at all, but find better ways to alter what is untrue in us, and become more authentic and real. Change is waking up and saying I don’t want to feel this way anymore; I can’t feel like this anymore if I am to survive. And so we take the first step in making that happen. 😀

I am on the last night of one month away. Away from my life as it is. As it was (I retired and left for my month sojourn on the coast visiting my grandson (and daughter and son-in-love), my sister on the island as well as wine-tasting through the Okanagan. Tonight, we watched the sunset from Berry Point on Gabriola Island and I felt the cool coastal air move through my body and my mind unwine completely. It felt like I could believe there is such a place called heaven and I am its inhabitant. Give me months like this and I wouldn’t need 7 hours uninterrupted sleep. Hugs

Insomnia, anxiety, self-doubt, situational depression…throw in a little ocd just for the heck of it…seven hours of uninterrupted sleep?? Aim a little lower, pal – don’t scroll through any devices as you try to shut off that complex brain of yours, maybe read something a little less intense (P.G. Wodehouse, perhaps? Benchley? Thurber?) and gently press the ‘off’ button as you look forward to five or six hours for starters.
(Note to self: yes, me too)

DK and his Kryptonite…mint-chocolate chip gelato. I’m no expert, but I can’t believe eating all that before you “try” to go to sleep is helping the situation. Signed, a guy with his own assortment of bad habits 🥴

” the bliss of breathing”…taking it all in, as he harvested Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac potatoes… the green, twisted vines of bright, vibrant nasturtiums interlaced with the potato foliage… had to be sacrificed, though not lost, to discover the smooth gems of potatoes…he gleaned the nasturtiums blooms and put them in the dull pink Depression era small footed fruit bowl- I declared as my summer flower vase…bought it on my diagnoses day last month and these are the first flower to nest in the vase, bringing me joy for the next several days!
” the bliss of breathing” and as, I say Each Breath is A Gift

As usual, had to read up first on that ominous Tylenol PM pill…. and – as you might expect it – didn’t like what I read one bit! Am reminded of that article I read about shutting off any device at LEAST one hour before going to bed, thinking of you but also of myself, shutting down my electronic life and then go to bed for some light reading (or not so light!)…… but at least not wondering why I can’t sleep! You will never sleep seven hours if you go on like that, and you know it. PLUS ice cream….. hellllooooo!
But great writing and thanks to my heavy delay, great entertainment by reading all those comments. Sleep well 🙂

There was a time I read every madness memoir I could find. Part research, part searching for shared experience. I got tired of the universal “descent into Hell” plots with only footnotes from those who lived to fight their way out. The daily work of sanity isn’t sexy.